Suevon Lee – Honolulu Civil Beathttps://www.civilbeat.org
Honolulu Civil Beat - Investigative ReportingWed, 19 Dec 2018 07:05:31 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.9The Fight Against Flight At Hawaii’s Public Middle Schoolshttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/12/the-fight-against-flight-at-hawaiis-public-middle-schools/
Tue, 11 Dec 2018 10:01:13 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1312455On a sunny Friday morning — the last day of November — several dozen parents clustered inside the media center at Jarrett Middle School deep in the Palolo Valley. Their kids are in the fifth grade at various elementary schools in and around the area. This time next year, they’ll be in the sixth grade, possibly even […]

]]>On a sunny Friday morning — the last day of November — several dozen parents clustered inside the media center at Jarrett Middle School deep in the Palolo Valley.

Their kids are in the fifth grade at various elementary schools in and around the area. This time next year, they’ll be in the sixth grade, possibly even at Jarrett, a sixth- to eighth-grade school serving 269 students.

The “Jarrett Middle School Tour” was not just an orientation for prospective parents. It was also an opportunity to convince the adults, who may not have decided yet about which middle school to send their child to, that Jarrett offers a safe, caring and nurturing environment.

“Our school is so small that if an issue comes up, we deal with it right away,” principal Reid Kuba said to the parents during a slideshow.

Jarrett Middle School Principal Reid Kuba, left, talks about his school during a tour for parents of prospective students.

Suevon Lee/Civil Beat

A colorful “Welcome Parents!” banner hung from the ceiling. Coffee, fruit and pastries were placed on a side table inside the air-conditioned library. Students in bright blue school shirts stood by to guide the parents on a follow-up campus tour.

Kuba kept the mood light as he detailed the school’s pluses: a small student body, a serene, peaceful campus in the foothills of Palolo Valley and signature quarterly events like “Ketchup Week,” in which school administrators lend teachers a helping hand in getting students caught up with schoolwork.

“That was a planned word, so don’t complain that Jarrett Middle School doesn’t know how to spell,” Kuba said, prompting some chuckles.

The jump from fifth to sixth grade is often a fraught time for families. Middle school is when peer pressure intensifies, fears of bullying or cyberbullying increase and things like smaller class sizes, individualized attention and after-school programs become more important as kids begin to develop interests, friendships and strive to meet rising academic demands.

The transition from elementary to middle school also marks one of the biggest drop-offs in public school enrollment in Hawaii, where the percent of private school enrollment is nearly double that of the national rate.

In the current school year, Hawaii’s private school enrollment is about 16 percent of the total school-age population; nationally, that rate is about 8 percent to 10 percent (one national data source, as reflected in the graphic below, showed an even higher private school enrollment in Hawaii for 2015 at 20 percent). Hawaii’s percentage of private school enrollment hasn’t fluctuated much in the last decade, according to data from the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools.

“Most of our private schools that have K-12 — they set their entry points where they accept more students in kindergarten, sixth grade and ninth grade,” said HAIS Hawaii Executive Director Phil Bossert. “In many cases, they just know those are the points where people choose to send their kid to private school.”

That’s why community groups like Parents for Public Schools of Hawaii are working with at least a dozen middle schools in Hawaii — including Jarrett — to coax families into keeping their kids in public middle school with tours, classroom visits and in-person conversations with school staff.

The efforts began shortly after Hawaii’s “Furlough Friday” crisis in 2009, when the state’s 256 public schools moved to a truncated four-day-a-week schedule as a cost-cutting measure, for a loss of 17 instructional days. It spurred discussion about the value of public education here.

“We’d ask our friends, did you go and visit your local (public middle) school? And they hadn’t,” said PPS Hawaii President Lois Yamauchi. “People who send their kids to private schools convince themselves and others that the public schools are not safe, or a good place for their kids.”

“It’s Honolulu-specific,” she said, of the decampment to private schools by families in town versus on the outskirts or neighbor islands. “There’s just a very strong narrative that exists around public and private schools in Honolulu.”

Jarrett Middle School Principal Reid Kuba extolled the benefits of his school’s small size.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Nowhere is that narrative more ingrained in the public consciousness than at Jarrett, whose feeder schools include Palolo Elementary and Aliiolani Elementary. The middle-schoolers usually go on to attend Kaimuki High — or Kalani High through a geographic exemption — or private schools like Punahou and Iolani.

Located in close proximity to the Palolo Homes housing project, the middle school has long had to contend with a perception it was a breeding ground for student bullying.

“We can’t shake the stigma of the ’70s and ’80s,” said Roth Pung, Jarrett’s student social services coordinator and teacher of college readiness elective classes. “In the 20 years I’ve been here, I can count on one or two hands the number of fights (I’ve seen). It’s a serene place to learn. We have smaller class sizes.”

Shelby Ozaki, whose daughter is a sixth-grader at Jarrett, said she didn’t know anything about the school prior to enrolling her daughter there.

“All I knew was the public housing,” she said.

Her daughter attended Liholiho Elementary, which technically feeds into another middle school in town. Ozaki is one of a handful of parents who actually sought out Jarrett for her child through a geographic exemption, citing her desire to find a smaller school environment.

“It’s almost like an elementary school,” she said, pointing to the smaller student population and hands-on component of the school. “The kids are really respectful.”

Public School Vs. Public School

These days, Hawaii’s public schools aren’t just competing with private schools for students but with each other.

That’s because of the option in Hawaii known as a geographic exemption, which allows families to apply to send their kid to a school outside their home district.

Out of approximately 179,000 students in DOE schools statewide, 20,015 — or about 11 percent — were granted a geographic exemption in the 2018-19 school year, according to Hawaii DOE spokeswoman Lindsay Chambers.

It’s becoming a more popular option for parents as they shop around for public schools, whether for a school’s good reputation, convenience if a parent works near the school or particular programs.

“Ever since I’ve been teaching in the DOE, it’s been an option,” said Kailua Intermediate Principal Jill LaBoy. “In my years here, I’ve noticed that more people are using (GE) whereas people before wouldn’t have thought about it as much.”

About 100 of Kailua Intermediate’s 775 students in grades 7 and 8 are there through GEs, said LaBoy.

The GE application window begins Jan. 1 and runs until March 1. Schools must notify parents of their decision by March 15, according to the DOE website. Parents can get turned down for lack of space, but can also appeal a rejection to the complex area superintendent.

Students at Jarrett Middle School answer questions about what it’s like to attend the Palolo school.

Suevon Lee/Civil Beat

In the four years Reid Kuba has led Jarrett Middle School, geographic exemptions have multiplied. When he arrived, the school had two students who came in through GEs. This year, there are 25.

Kuba said the school attracts parents from outside the district due to its After-School All-Stars Program — it’s only one of a handful of middle schools in Honolulu to offer this — and free breakfast and lunch for all kids because it has a large percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch.

Word of mouth has also helped: teachers and staff at nearby elementary schools have helped spread the word about Jarrett, he said.

After the school’s recent tour, some parents came up to him and asked for a GE application they wanted to fill out on the spot, he said. They cited the family-like, mellow atmosphere.

As much as GEs can provide a boost, the flip side is a loss for other schools, which means reduced funding under the state’s weighted student formula that allocates money to each school based on total enrollment.

“Waimanalo (Elementary and Intermediate) had money taken away from them because they lost students, because (of who) we took in,” said Kailua Intermediate’s LaBoy. “That’s a downside. They need money. We all need money. So now that starts to hurt their programs — they might have to cut a teacher.”

On the other hand, Kailua Intermediate was able to hire a new physical education and health teacher and buy new computers with the additional DOE dollars coming in, she said.

“I think a healthy part of competition is that it makes schools look at themselves and say, what are other schools doing that we can do?” said Yamauchi, of Parents for Public Schools Hawaii.

Hiroku and Aaron Luther, whose son is a fifth-grader at a nearby school, attended the Jarrett tour. They are considering Jarrett, which is their son’s regular school, or applying for a GE into Kaimuki Middle School.

At the end of the tour,
which included classroom visits, a student panel, a parents’ panel, even a student musical performance of the school theme song with ukulele and guitars, the Luthers seemed pleased by what they saw and expressed what they want out of their son’s middle school education.

“We like small community, that the teacher knows who he is,” said Hiroku Luther.

]]>Hawaii Public Schools Sued Over Unequal Treatment Of Female Athleteshttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/12/hawaii-public-schools-sued-over-unequal-treatment-of-female-athletes/
Thu, 06 Dec 2018 22:17:37 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1311989A federal class action lawsuit against the Hawaii Department of Education was filed Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii over gender inequities for female athletes at the state’s most populous high school. The 67-page complaint, brought under the federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX, comes 10 months after the organization sent a demand […]

]]>A federal class action lawsuit against the Hawaii Department of Education was filed Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii over gender inequities for female athletes at the state’s most populous high school.

The 67-page complaint, brought under the federal anti-discrimination law known as Title IX, comes 10 months after the organization sent a demand letter to the DOE requesting the agency address the glaring disparity in locker room availability for boys and girls sports teams at Campbell High School.

That letter was sent to the DOE shortly after a Civil Beat report exposed the lack of girls locker room facilities on the Ewa Beach campus, with female softball team players forced to change for practice on school bleachers, run to an off-campus Burger King to use the restroom and haul heavy athletic gear from class to class because they had no place to store equipment. By contrast, male athletes faced no such hardships.

The boys locker room at Campbell High School. The school has not had a separate athletic girls locker room in the decades since the school opened.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“We could have filed this 10 months ago when we first found out about the problem, but we’ve been trying to work with the DOE in the interim to see if we could avoid this,” said ACLU Hawaii Executive Director Josh Wisch. “We didn’t get the information we requested and we didn’t get to a result that we requested — more importantly, that students need. That’s what it’s about at the end of the day.”

The Oahu Interscholastic Association, an entity controlled by DOE that schedules games and tournaments at athletic facilities and organizes travel for all secondary schools on the island, is also named in the suit.

In a statement to Civil Beat Thursday morning, the DOE said it was unable to provide comment at this point.

“We have not received nor had a chance to review the lawsuit and are unable to provide information or a comment due to pending litigation,” spokeswoman Lindsay Chambers said.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, cites potential Title IX violations that go far beyond the lack of a girls locker room at Campbell High.

It alleges preferential treatment of boys sports teams over girls, including access to more qualified, experienced and better-paid coaches and trainers; scheduling of prime-time games at premier venues like Aloha Stadium that draw larger attendance; travel opportunities to compete in games and tournaments on neighbor islands and mainland destinations like Las Vegas and Phoenix; and more visible promotion and marketing, including on the school’s website.

The suit also alleges school administrators failed to secure a practice pool for the girls water polo team until after the 2017-18 season began, forcing the girls to practice either on dry land or in the open ocean and causing their coach to pay roughly $60 a day twice a week to rent out a regulation-sized pool for practices when school funding didn’t come through.

The complaint also alleges Campbell High administrators took retaliatory action against the girls water polo team when team members raised concerns about the conditions, including threatening to cancel the program and refusing to sign a $1,000 outside grant offered to the team.

The two plaintiffs in the lawsuit, identified by initials only, are 17-year-old seniors who are on the Campbell girls varsity water polo and swimming teams. They seek to represent a class of current and future Campbell High female students.

Four portable toilets are the only ones near the Campbell High baseball, softball and football fields. Female softball players often have to run off campus or back to the school building to use the restroom.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

While the suit is specific to Campbell High, which in 2017-18 had an enrollment of 3,123 students, the allegations point to a troubling pattern of athletic gender inequality in Hawaii’s public schools, according to the ACLU.

“It’s larger than just Campbell High School,” said Mateo Caballero, legal director of ACLU Hawaii. “As you see from the history of lack of (Title IX) compliance in Hawaii, our hope is that we’ll get relief that goes beyond Campbell.”

This is not the first time DOE has been sued over purported Title IX violations. It was named in a 2010 lawsuit brought by ACLU Hawaii against Maui’s Baldwin High over use of the school’s athletic practice fields. In that case, U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra granted the plaintiffs a preliminary injunction that required the DOE to build a new girls softball practice field equal in quality to the field used by the boy’s baseball team.

The co-author and outspoken proponent of the 1972 Title IX law was the late Congresswoman Patsy Mink of Hawaii, for whom the act was renamed in 2002 as the “Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act.”

ACLU Executive Director Josh Wisch discusses the filing of a Title IX lawsuit against the DOE and OIA as fellow ACLU attorneys and co-counsel stand behind him.

Suevon Lee/Civil Beat

Thursday afternoon, lawyers with ACLU Hawaii and their co-counsel held a press conference to discuss the suit outside the Hawaii State Library, where a new bronze sculpture of Mink has been installed. The congresswoman faced barriers in her career path due to her gender and race.

“This statue is a good reminder that (Mink’s) work is not done, and that the fight is not over,” Wisch told reporters gathered at the press conference.

Long History Of Title IX Concerns

Former Hawaii state Rep. Jackie Young had expressed concerns to the DOE as far back as 1994 over gender inequities in DOE’s school facilities, according to Thursday’s complaint.

The Hawaii Legislature passed legislation in 1999 requiring the state DOE to come up with a plan to address gender inequity in K-12 sports, but the bill was vetoed by then-Gov. Ben Cayetano after the DOE falsely assured the state it was compliant with Title IX, according to the complaint.

Through executive action Cayetano ordered the DOE to come up with a timeline for coming into Title IX compliance and a specific plan of how it planned to do so, including submitting mandatory quarterly and annual reports of progress, according to the complaint.

Shortly thereafter, the Legislature passed a law in 2000 known as the “Gender Equity in Athletics Law,” which created an advisory commission that, over the next several years, “played a key role in exposing routine delays in the DOE’s completion of baseline compliance assessments and its piecemeal or misguided approaches to resolving gender equity issues,” the complaint states.

The commission’s evaluations at the time focused on five Hawaii high schools — Hilo, Kahuku, Kaiser, King Kekaulike and Roosevelt. It looked specifically at better locker rooms and facilities, as well as more opportunity for pre-season competition, offered to boys teams.

Patsy Mink

File Photo

After the advisory commission issued a final report in 2003 indicating “minimal progress” by the DOE, “progress regarding gender equity in athletics has halted and, in several respects, even regressed,” the complaint states.

In March, the Hawaii DOE sent its response to the ACLU’s demand letter to come up with a specific plan to address the locker room issue by the 2018-19 school year. But the response lacked mention of a specific plan or comprehensive data points, other than several gender inequity projects currently underway.

The facilities branch has maintained that the old age of many DOE schools — many more than 100 years old — makes constructing new facilities or locker rooms no easy thing.

In a recent presentation to the state Board of Education, the DOE said it would isolate “Gender Equity” into a separate category as far as allocation of dollars. Previously, it was folded into a broader bucket known as “Program Support,” which received $27 million in fiscal year 2019.

The DOE has requested $10.7 million for “gender equity” alone for fiscal years 2020 and 2021.

Suit Alleges ‘Grossly Unequal Treatment’

The allegations specific to Campbell High read like a blueprint of what not to do if you’re a public school trying to be compliant with Title IX.

It discusses a boys stand-alone athletic locker room facility equipped with 120 full-size lockers, showers, at least four bathroom stalls, plus air conditioning and an office. It references a boys “baseball house” that has a mini-fridge and couch, plus a large storage container used to store equipment, plus a batting cage. By contrast, the girls softball team has no such dedicated “softball house,” and is offered a container half the size of the boys in need of repair with no access to bathrooms close to their practice field.

It also discusses the wide disparity in the composition of coaching staff, noting how the Campbell’s girls varsity softball and soccer teams currently lack full-time coaches, with coaching vacancies on the boys teams filled far more quickly.

This extends to pay for coaches: the complaint also alleges that in two of the last three years, assistant coaches of the girls water polo team were not compensated in order to boost the salaries of the boys football coaches and hire more assistant coaches for that team.

Campbell High girls track team members at an after-school practice session earlier in the 2017-18 school year.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The consequence is more turnover, according to the complaint: the Campbell girls water polo team had three different head coaches in the last four years, which has been “incredibly disruptive to the water polo athletes,” states the complaint.

The suit also alleges that few athletic trainers are present at girls games, putting those athletes at increased risk of injury.

In a statement Thursday, the two female plaintiffs expressed their frustration over inferior treatment.

“I’m tired of seeing my team’s passion and efforts get pushed aside and unaccounted for just because we’re not boys,” “Plaintiff One” said. “We never get taken seriously, and it feels like nothing we do ever matters and that the DOE doesn’t care about us. We’re not asking for much, just equality.”

“I know so many girls that are passionate and good at what they do but they always get pushed aside,” continued “Plaintiff One.” “There’s also many girls that want to participate in more sports but they decide not to because the school offers us no support.”

The lawsuit seeks a court ruling that the DOE has discriminated against Campbell High female athletes and retaliated against them in violation of Title IX and an injunction that the agency devise some plan to address the concerns.

Elizabeth Kristen, Legal Aid At Work senior attorney who’s co-representing the plaintiffs, said she’s hopeful the suit will cause the DOE to “engage in structured negotiations to come to a binding settlement agreement.”

“The bigger picture point is that this is a systemic issue and monitoring needs to be system-wide,” said ACLU Hawaii staff attorney Wookie Kim. “It’s really hard to single out single schools for being good or bad. Campbell High School happens to be the most egregious example we saw and that’s why we’re focusing on that school now.”

]]>Want To Teach In Hawaii? The Job Often Comes With A Big Pay Cuthttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/12/want-to-teach-in-hawaii-the-job-often-comes-with-a-big-pay-cut/
Mon, 03 Dec 2018 10:01:00 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1310736When Leilani Frazier joined the Hawaii Department of Education as a teacher in 2008, she had already accrued nearly a decade of professional experience: seven years in a small school district in San Diego, followed by two years teaching English in Japan. The California native came to Hawaii because she was looking for a new […]

]]>When Leilani Frazier joined the Hawaii Department of Education as a teacher in 2008, she had already accrued nearly a decade of professional experience: seven years in a small school district in San Diego, followed by two years teaching English in Japan.

The California native came to Hawaii because she was looking for a new environment. She also had family here.

“I just wanted something different,” Frazier said. “I was at a life point where I wanted to try something new.”

The veteran teacher knew the move to Hawaii’s school system would involve a salary reduction. She just wasn’t prepared for it to be so steep. In San Diego, her pay had been just over $60,000 annually. Her pay for her first year in Hawaii was $46,000.

Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary teacher Leilani Frazier, seen here in her classroom after school, moved to Hawaii for a change of pace. That move came with a $14,000 pay cut in her teacher salary.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“It was significant,” Frazier, 42, said of the $14,000 pay cut. “I was very frustrated by the fact I was losing my years of service and all of those years of credit I earned in San Diego.”

Hawaii's Teacher Shortage

As part of an Education Writers Association fellowship, reporter Suevon Lee will delve more deeply into the critical issues of teacher recruiting and high teacher turnover in Hawaii. She will report on the academic and social costs for students, families and schools caused by the state’s teacher shortage, and solutions being tried elsewhere.

If you want to share a story about the impact of the teacher shortage in the Aloha State, please contact Suevon at slee@civilbeat.org.

A dock in pay and loss of professional development credits earned elsewhere can be a rude awakening for veteran teachers with years of experience who opt to continue their careers in Hawaii.

A maximum of six years of non-DOE experience is counted toward placement on the salary scale. Most professional development credits earned outside Hawaii can’t be applied toward a higher pay classification.

In other words, if you’re an experienced teacher from the mainland, you’ve really got to want to teach in Hawaii, because you’re likely to face a big pay cut.

Teacher pay in Hawaii — which currently begins at $47,443 for a certified, entry-level teacher — is considered the lowest in the country when adjusted for cost of living. It’s believed to cause young, inexperienced teachers from the mainland to leave after only a few years because they can’t afford to stay, contributing to a high teacher turnover and shortage.

But another element to the narrative involves newly hired veteran teachers.

Often armed with advanced degrees and depth of insight into the teaching field, they can bring added dimension to the school system with their years of classroom experience, training and know-how.

It’s just not reflected in their paychecks.

Sharon Kearney had 17 years of teaching experience in various school districts around Southern California when she was hired as a special education teacher at Maui High in February 2009. She was out of work when she applied to teach in Hawaii — which has reciprocity with California when it comes to teacher licenses.

Her job interview consisted of a 30-minute phone call that ended with the principal’s pledge he’d get back to her in three days. It didn’t take quite that long.

Thirty minutes later, she got a call back with a job offer.

“I landed on a Friday, met the principal on Saturday, found a place to live Sunday and started school on Monday,” Kearney, 61, recalled.

But like Frazier, Kearney’s starting pay was significantly lower than what she had been making at her last teaching job in California. Her pay in Hawaii was in the $40,000 range — or about $16,000 lower than her salary during her most recent job teaching special education elementary students in Santa Barbara Unified School District.

Kearney, who has adult children and a master’s degree, had previously never set foot in Hawaii. Eager to stay in teaching, she had to accept the pay and plug forward.

“I had nothing to go back to,” she said of employment on the mainland. “I had to make it work.”

Pay Not Based On Seniority

Hawaii teacher salaries are based on a combination of factors: highest educational level attained, number of professional development credits earned and negotiated automatic pay increases at the start of each new school year.

But unlike some other school districts with similarly sized student populations and high cost of living, Hawaii doesn’t give teachers automatic pay increases based on years of service, relying instead on a pre-negotiated salary schedule featuring varying increments.

In other school districts, like Los Angeles Unified, teachers are given a pay raise every year for their first nine years of service, with an opportunity to accrue additional pay up to 14 years of experience. But since Hawaii does not tie pay to years of service, younger teachers with their eye set on a longer career trajectory here have more limited financial mobility, according to the Hawaii State Teachers Association.

“Teachers between 10 to 20 years (of experience) are almost making the exact same salary,” HSTA President Corey Rosenlee pointed out at a recent Board of Education meeting. “It’s possible that a 10-year teacher is making more than a 20-year teacher depending on how many education credits they get.”

In New York City public schools, teachers automatically get “step” pay increases for each continuous year they work. After their fifth year and subsequent intervals thereafter, they also get what’s known as a “longevity” pay increase. Its maximum teacher pay is $128,657 per the latest contract.

Hawaii’s current teacher contract, covering 2017-2021, provides for an alternating-year 3.5 percent increase and pre-negotiated step increase, for a total 13.6 percent pay increase over those four years. The upped wages cost the state $115.4 million.

The most a full-time teacher who works 10 months a year can make in Hawaii is a little over $90,000.

A net effect of Hawaii not offering an automatic pay increase with each continuous year of service is a narrower range of foreseeable pay than other school districts that may tie their pay increases to years of service, if only up to a certain number of years.

“There are teachers (in Hawaii) who probably have 30 years of service who are not top of the pay scale,” Rosenlee pointed out.

The cost to the DOE of compensating teachers currently in the pipeline for their actual years of service would be about $50 million to $60 million, according to HSTA’s estimate.

Sarah Milianta, 34, had 11 years of teaching experience in her home state of Texas before she and her husband decided to make the move to Oahu in 2016 for his job in corporate sales.

A seventh-grade STEM teacher at Ilima Intermediate School, Milianta said she was making $66,00 a year in Texas but saw her pay in Hawaii plummet to $49,000. Additionally, the 642 hours of professional development credit she accrued in Texas did not carry over here.

“That was a little traumatic. My pay here is crazy,” she said.

An additional frustration, she said, is having to pay for professional development out of pocket. Her former school district in Texas offered this for free, from hands-on science to new technology tools to conversational Spanish to better communicate with parents and students.

But here, semester-long PD courses can cost from $100 to $250 for three credits. It takes 15 credits to “reclassify” to the next level to reach a higher pay differential. So having to reclassify could cost a teacher — already saddled with other expenses, like school supplies for their kids — $500 and up.

Despite the financial sacrifices, Milianta said she and her husband, who don’t have kids right now, are trying to stay in Hawaii. “We’re trying really hard to make this home,” she said. “My goal is to put down roots.”

Sarah Milianta’s teacher salary increases in her former state of Texas were based on years of services, teacher observation scores and a professional portfolio of projects.

Courtesy Isaiah Peacott-Ricardos via Teach For America Hawaii

Frazier, who teaches sixth grade at Pearl Harbor Kai Elementary, said she was stuck at “Step 5” on Hawaii’s teacher pay scale for years until the new contract came through.

“Most school districts, you move up every year. So, in 10 years, you know where you’ll be,” she said. “But here, the steps only go up if it’s negotiated into the contract.

“We all either stay together or move up together. That’s how it can get really frustrating.”

Since moving to Hawaii, Frazier has earned a master’s degree in educational leadership and took enough PD classes to reach the highest pay classification. But her current annual salary of $61,182 is still far less than had she stayed in San Diego, where, as a 17th year teacher by now, her salary would be $84,953.

“If it was up to me, if I didn’t have my family here and my husband, it’s definitely a possibility,” she said, of returning to the mainland to teach.

But she added, “I like having my family close by. That’s a big pull for me.”

That support has definitely helped: When Frazier first moved to Hawaii 10 years ago, she was able to save rent money by living at her grandfather’s house.

DOE Talks ‘Bold Action’

Hawaii’s top education brass acknowledges the teacher pay situation in Hawaii is worth a closer look and even a possible retooling at some point in the future.

“We fully recognize that recruiting and retaining the best talent requires bold action,” Cindy Covell, assistant superintendent of talent management, said in a statement. “We are committed to exploring all options to ensure every student has a highly qualified and effective teacher throughout their education with us.”

Hawaii’s DOE employs about 13,500 instructional staff, which includes teachers, librarians and counselors. About 4,000 teachers have five years or less of teaching experience; another 2,000 have six to 10 years; while another 7,000 have 10 years or more of experience, according to the HSTA’s Rosenlee.

Only a little over 50 percent of new teachers make it to the fifth year — a statistic one national education policy expert, when told this figure, said was a “huge turnover.”

For now, the Hawaii education department plans to commission a study analyzing how teacher compensation works in comparable school districts. The goal is to use the data to “establish benchmarks (regarding salaries and benefits) against other states and similar school districts” and also learn more about how they use differentiated pay scales for teachers in high needs areas, like special education, said Covell.

The study is currently in the procurement process and the DOE hasn’t yet determined which school districts it will analyze, she said.

Education Superintendent Christina Kishimoto speaks at the state Board of Education meeting.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Hawaii school Superintendent Christina Kishimoto acknowledged the importance of financial mobility for teachers, saying at a recent Board of Education meeting that teaching “needs to be treated as a highly respected profession.”

Younger first-year teachers may be fine with group housing to start out, she noted, but, eventually, “they then want the same thing everyone else wants: a house, maybe land or a condo.”

“Other districts have looked to escalating compensation,” she said. “Those are all things we need to talk about and come to a resolution as quickly as possible as far as what that funding ask will be to the Legislature.”

Marguerite Roza, the director of Edunomics Lab, a research center at Georgetown University that looks at education finance issues, said school districts are seeing “a ton of experimentation right now in teacher salary schedules” to plug shortages. That includes using data to identify those years of service in which most teachers leave and where the highest-needs areas are, and tiering salaries accordingly.

“You look at turnover data: do they teach for one, three or five years and leave? Or do they have the same exit rate and then it levels off?” Roza said. “All of those findings dictate where you want to put your money. If your big problem is you can’t recruit any teachers, then raise your starting pay.”

Roza said a lot of school districts nationwide are now targeting salaries depending on the subject taught or geographic area. For instance, she cited one school district that’s paying special education teachers as much as an additional $8,000 a year and teachers in high-poverty areas an extra $5,000 a year to sweeten the pot.

Hawaii, which has a particular need for special education and secondary English, math and science teachers, offers a one-time $3,000 bonus for teachers willing to work in hard-to-staff remote, rural areas.

But it doesn’t use a differentiated pay structure that’s becoming vogue in other parts of the country.

“A signing bonus or one-year lure isn’t actually that big,” Roza noted. “It seems like a lot, but it’s not as life-changing. If you’re trying to use money to solve real labor problems, you have to put real dollars behind it.”

The ultimate downside to the pay issue will be a constantly revolving door of teachers.

It is noticeable to Milianta, of Ilima Intermediate, who said it trickles down to the way the students approach the teacher-student relationship, a building block to learning.

As an example, she cited a former student of Samoan heritage whose first name took some practice to correctly pronounce. The girl, who was accustomed to mainland teachers getting her name wrong, asked Milianta to just call her by a shorter nickname.

“She already learned that code-switching,” she said. “Kids see teachers like me as in and out. They’re used to the revolving door. It’s so assumed already.”

But Milianta got the student to say her full name over and over again, practicing until she finally got it. After that, the girl became more engaged in class, even hanging out with her teacher in the classroom during recess or lunch. But her sense of security was fleeting.

By the end of the year, the student grew distant again, Milianta said.

“’You won’t be here next year, miss,’” she recalled her saying. “Kids here are used to trying to visit their teachers the year after they’ve had them and finding out they’ve moved away.”

]]>Lawsuit Claims State Denies Critical Therapy For Kids With Autismhttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/lawsuit-claims-state-denies-critical-therapy-for-kids-with-autism/
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 10:01:51 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1311204Roughly 1,900 students with autism are enrolled in Hawaii public schools but the vast majority are not receiving required behavioral health treatment during regular school hours, a new lawsuit against the Hawaii Department of Education and Department of Human Services alleges. Brought in federal court by the Hawaii Disability Rights Center, the lawsuit alleges the […]

]]>Roughly 1,900 students with autism are enrolled in Hawaii public schools but the vast majority are not receiving required behavioral health treatment during regular school hours, a new lawsuit against the Hawaii Department of Education and Department of Human Services alleges.

Brought in federal court by the Hawaii Disability Rights Center, the lawsuit alleges the two state agencies have failed to provide or ensure that Applied Behavior Analysis, or ABA services, are made available to the students when necessary, violating federal laws including the Medicaid Act, Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

ABA is an individualized behavioral health therapy that treats kids with autism through scientific methods known to improve communication and social functioning and also reduce interfering behaviors.

The issue, according to the Disability Rights Center, is that both agencies are flouting their responsibility under the federal law to ensure that students who require ABA services are receiving them from licensed and qualified professionals during the school day without having to leave campus.

Louis Erteschik of the Hawaii Disability Rights Center called the lawsuit “a last resort.”

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“In my view, we tried very hard in the last year or two to resolve this without having to file suit,” said Louis Erteschik, executive director of the Hawaii Disability Rights Center. “This was a total last resort.”

The action follows repeated testimony before the Board of Education and Legislature by advocates for autistic children concerning coverage and licensure, and a 2014 lawsuit against the DHS.

In that lawsuit, the Hawaii Disability Rights Center successfully convinced a federal court that DHS, as a Medicaid administrator, must cover ABA services for Medicaid-eligible children through age 21.

DHS compliance with the 2016 court order has been good so far, according to Erteschik, except when it comes to ABA services during school hours. In those instances, the suit says, the agency has failed to ensure that Medicaid-eligible children with autism are getting the proper care at school.

That’s where the Department of Education comes in: The lawsuit states that the DOE is denying private ABA providers access to school campuses to administer the therapy — even when the cost is covered by Medicaid or the student’s private health insurance at no cost to the DOE.

“This is a problem that could be very easily fixed and shouldn’t ever have required a lawsuit,” Erteschik said. “There’s no reason these providers can’t start going into the schools tomorrow.”

The DOE’s refusal to accommodate, the suit alleges, violates the ADA and prevents kids with autism from receiving a free and appropriate education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act since it forces parents to pull their kids out of school so they can get the needed therapy elsewhere.

In a statement Thursday, the Department of Education declined specific comment except to say it “provides all services to students eligible under the IDEA (that are) determined appropriate and necessary through the Individualized Education Program process, including ABA.”

According to Amanda Kelly, a board certified behavior analyst and legislative chair of the Board of Hawaii Association for Behavior Analysis, the lawsuit is “specific to the lack of coordination of DHS and DOE.”

“Our state has literally failed these children on both the medical and educational front. They (DHS and DOE) are both responsible,” she said.

The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction against both agencies, arguing the lack of ABA services to kids and young adults up through age 22 who require it during school hours are causing them irreparable harm.

“We’re asking the court to tell DHS and DOE to talk to each other and work it out so affected students can get the services they need during school,” said Kristin Holland, an attorney with Dentons law firm in Honolulu — previously known as Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing — which is handling the case.

She said the small percentage of kids in Hawaii public schools who do receive ABA services through their Individualized Education Programs is the result of parents fighting their way through the system or waging due process cases.

“It’s this inscrutable process … that parents of children with autism are expected to navigate,” she said. “The end result is children are not getting services they’re entitled to during school. It’s putting parents in an impossible situation, where they have to pull the kids out of school to get services.”

Reached Thursday, a spokeswoman for DHS said the agency was “still reviewing” the complaint with counsel and would not comment.

Legislative History

Child advocates say it’s not just the availability of ABA services for minors that’s important, but the quality of the care.

In the last several years, the Legislature has tried to address the issue.

In 2015, the Legislature passed a law that mandates commercial health plans cover ABA services for minors with autism.

That same year, Hawaii passed a law creating licensure requirements for individuals who provide applied behavior analysis to kids or adults. As of Jan. 1, 2016, behavior analysts are required to be licensed. In 2016 and 2017, the DOE requested that teachers administering ABA in schools be exempt from the so-called Licensure Law, according to a declaration Kelly filed in this case.

The DOE has said it was working on building capacity with a staff of licensed providers. It continued asking for an exemption in 2018.

In April 2018 testimony submitted to lawmakers, School Superintendent Christina Kishimoto said the department’s efforts to provide ABA services to students was “a work in progress” and said the DOE needs “additional time to build its internal capacity” of licensed behavior analysts and paraprofessionals to provide treatment.

The DOE acknowledges that of the 1,900 kids with autism in public schools, only about 330, or 17 percent, receive ABA through their IEPs.

The lawsuit alleges that DOE personnel fail to acknowledge professional autism diagnoses when assessing a student’s IEP, ignore parents’ requests for such services and allow unqualified staff to determine whether ABA should be included in an IEP.

In her declaration, Kelly said she is aware of “numerous DOE teachers who are aware of these issues with DOE but too afraid to come forward because they fear retaliation.”

This past legislative session lawmakers pushed through Act 205, under which the DOE was supposed to come up with an implementation plan to seek reimbursement of any Medicaid-billable ABA services provided to students with autism. An initial report was due Oct. 8 with quarterly reports due to the Legislature and Board of Education after that.

“The biggest concern is that they haven’t posted for positions and haven’t really made any good faith effort to build capacity,” Kelly said. “Have other states figured it out? Yes. Are we even trying? I don’t think so.”

]]>Hawaii Aims To Quicken The Pace Of School Repairshttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/hawaii-aims-to-quicken-the-pace-of-school-repairs/
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 10:01:08 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1310875Repair and maintenance work at any one of the Hawaii Department of Education’s 256 aging school buildings is so commonplace, the budget for this work surpasses that of desired classroom upgrades, including facilities for new STEM labs. The DOE has a whopping backlog of 3,800 repair projects statewide. But even with a budget of $274 […]

]]>Repair and maintenance work at any one of the Hawaii Department of Education’s 256 aging school buildings is so commonplace, the budget for this work surpasses that of desired classroom upgrades, including facilities for new STEM labs.

The DOE has a whopping backlog of 3,800 repair projects statewide. But even with a budget of $274 million, it can’t get to those repairs quickly enough, with the appropriation/design/bid/construction cycle averaging a glacial seven years.

But under a new DOE initiative that leverages a new contract procurement process and database to track the pending backlog in real time, the DOE hopes to shorten those years to months, leading to much quicker fixes to sagging roofs or faulty ventilation systems.

“We’re making it much less cumbersome,” said Dann Carlson, assistant superintendent for school facilities and support services, during a presentation to community stakeholders at Impact Hub Honolulu on Tuesday morning.

Dann Carlson, DOE’s assistant superintendent for school facilities and support services, takes questions from community members about plans to bring greater transparency to the status of school repair projects.

Suevon Lee/Civil Beat

The presentation was the fourth in a speaker series launched by Transform Hawaii Government, a nonprofit that promotes better government accessibility and transparency through technology.

The intended audience for such talks — which have featured Chief Election Officer Scott Nago and Hawaii Chief Innovation Officer Todd Nacapuy — are community groups that have “an interest and appreciation of the modernization efforts of state government,” said THG Executive Director Christine Sakuda.

“The subject matter can be a little dense,” she said, but the idea ultimately is to create public awareness of government modernization efforts.

Subject matter density was apparent in Tuesday’s DOE presentation, which was as much a summary of the DOE’s new “Future Schools Now” framework as it was an attempt to explain how information flow works within the agency.

“Our state departments, including the DOE, are way behind the IT race,” state Sen. Michelle Kidani, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said in opening remarks to kick off the presentation. She added that the quality of education depends on “having access to technology.”

Carlson said a new online database that the DOE plans to roll out soon to complex area superintendents and Board of Education members will consolidate all pending school repair and maintenance projects.

Asked by Sakuda about the impact of such a tool, Carlson said it would be felt “particularly for folks in my shop.”

“We can teach people to pull information,” he said.

The top maintenance priority for Hawaii’s schools is roofing repairs, followed by heating, air conditioning and ventilation needs, then electrical upgrades.

“Our school facilities play a critical role in providing equitable access to a quality public education for all students,” Hawaii school superintendent Christina Kishimoto said in a recent statement.

One in five DOE buildings are over 100 years old. About two in five are more than 65 years old.

In the DOE’s capital improvements biennium budget, repair and maintenance ranks second only to the “capacity” category, which refers to the construction of new schools and classrooms, a priority to relieve school overcrowding and rising enrollment in some areas.

Shifting school populations, like declining student numbers in Kaimuki but increasing enrollment on the Ewa side, complicates the capital improvement process, Carlson said.

One of the changes with the new DOE procurement process is being able to group repairs into bulk projects over a multiyear contract. The price of nonconstruction fees through partnerships with these new vendors will also be lower: 12 cents on the dollar versus 35 cents on the dollar, according to Carlson.

“I can execute projects much quicker, within months, as opposed to four to seven years,” he said.

The Hawaii Department of Education’s facilities maintenance branch is accountable for 4,425 buildings across 256 school campuses statewide. That amounts to more than 20 million square feet of space, according to the DOE.

]]>Hawaii’s Teacher Shortage Is Getting Worsehttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/hawaiis-teacher-shortage-is-getting-worse/
Thu, 15 Nov 2018 10:01:02 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1309031Hawaii is increasingly relying on uncertified teachers to fill its classrooms as it faces a steadily upward trend of teachers leaving the state, according to the most recent employment data slated to be presented to the state Board of Education Thursday. That the state faces a teacher shortage, as is the case in many other […]

]]>Hawaii is increasingly relying on uncertified teachers to fill its classrooms as it faces a steadily upward trend of teachers leaving the state, according to the most recent employment data slated to be presented to the state Board of Education Thursday.

That the state faces a teacher shortage, as is the case in many other states, is nothing new. The latest employment data from the Hawaii Department of Education illustrates just how continuous the pattern of teachers leaving Hawaii and reliance on emergency hires has been over the past six years.

Out of a total 13,437 teaching positions this year, 508 spots were filled by instructors who had not completed a state-approved teacher preparation program. An additional 521 spots were vacant as of Aug. 1. That amounts to 1,029 positions statewide not filled by highly qualified teachers.

In comparison, in the 2012-13 school year, out of a total 12,934 teaching positions, 274 were filled by emergency hires and 334 spots were vacant as of Aug. 1, for a total 608 positions not filled by certified teachers that year.

The recent data reflects another long-term trend: teachers leaving Hawaii has outpaced retirement as the top reason for attrition in the last three years. In the 2017-18 school year, 423 teachers left Hawaii for the mainland, a 71 percent increase from five years ago.

This is happening as the state struggles to hold on to teachers already in the DOE. The department set a goal to reach at least 60 percent in its five-year teacher retention rate by 2020; in 2018-19, just 467 of 907 teachers hired in 2014, or 51 percent, hit the five-year mark — an indicator of teacher effectiveness.

“We, as a state, can’t keep our certified teachers,” Corey Rosenlee, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, wrote in testimony to the board. “If we find a way together to retain our certified teachers, we will not have a recruitment problem.”

The teachers’ union asserts the teacher recruitment and retention situation here has “reached crisis proportions,” with a demand for instructors forcing the state to rely on mainland teacher recruits who may leave after several years, Teach For America candidates only here temporarily and other initiatives that curb, but don’t remediate, the churn, the union argues.

In a statement to Civil Beat, Cindy Covell, Assistant Superintendent of the DOE Office of Talent Management, pointed to the number of new teachers who are certified: 12,408 this year; 12,309 last year; and 12,268 in 2016-17, and also the increase in total number of teaching positions year over year.

“Overall, our numbers show that our aggressive recruitment efforts have been successful in filling an increasing number of teacher positions annually over the past few years,” she said.

The HSTA has long argued the source of poor teacher retention is low pay. A starting teacher’s salary in Hawaii is $45,963, compared with the national average of $38,617, but the state also has among the highest costs of living in the U.S.

“The students who suffer the most attend schools that already have a hard time filling their open positions because their schools are remote, rural, or struggling with poverty, crime, alienation and disaffection,” Rosenlee wrote.

A constitutional amendment to boost public education funding through a state property tax was invalidated by the Hawaii Supreme Court before it had a chance to go before voters this past election.

Hawaii ranks first in the country when it comes to teacher turnover rate, according to the Learning Policy Institute, an education policy think tank. The state’s percentage of uncertified teachers — 4.9 percent — is also nearly twice that of the national average of 2.6 percent.

HSTA President Corey Rosenlee, far right, said the teacher recruitment and retention issue has reached “crisis proportions.” School Superintendent Christina Kishimoto, center, said the DOE is committed to retaining talent.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Hawaii’s school Superintendent Christina Kishimoto has said the DOE is shifting to a “talent management” approach to focus on retaining teachers already in the pipeline rather than just recruitment. Among the initiatives cited by the department are alternate paths to licensure.

One DOE policy facing scrutiny by the teachers’ union is its practice of considering only a maximum six years’ of teaching experience for salary placement, a policy the HSTA argues is dis-incentivizing experienced teachers from the outside to consider taking a teaching job in Hawaii.

The DOE is expected to address that point at Thursday’s meeting.

The latest employment data also focused on special education teaching positions, a role Hawaii — and most other states around the U.S. — has historically struggled to fill with qualified instructors.

This year, the state education department filled 1,860 of 2,212 special ed teaching roles with a qualified teacher in that area, for a fill-rate of 84 percent. Last year, it filled 1,840 of 2,151 special ed teaching roles for a fill rate of 86 percent.

]]>Protections For Transgender Kids Still Spotty Inside Schoolshttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/protections-for-transgender-kids-still-spotty-inside-schools/
Tue, 13 Nov 2018 10:01:36 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1308459Every morning, a ritual takes place at the Kalaheo High School registrar’s office on the windward side of Oahu. It’s a small but vital action, since it could make the difference between peace of mind and debilitating anxiety for one 16-year-old junior. The school registrar pulls out the student roster, manually whites-out the legal name […]

]]>Every morning, a ritual takes place at the Kalaheo High School registrar’s office on the windward side of Oahu. It’s a small but vital action, since it could make the difference between peace of mind and debilitating anxiety for one 16-year-old junior.

The school registrar pulls out the student roster, manually whites-out the legal name of the student and writes in his preferred name. This is performed daily to prevent a potential substitute teacher from inadvertently calling out the student’s legal name during roll call.

“All my classmates know me as Johnathan,” says Johnathan Goodwin, who transitioned from female to male in intermediate school. “If (a sub) called out (my birth-given name), which has happened, it’s a very anxiety-inducing situation.”

Kalaheo High student Johnathan Goodwin is the “TransTeen Ambassador” for The Lavender Center & Clinic, a nonprofit health clinic that works with the local LGBT community.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

That step is just one way in which Kalaheo High, a public school in Kailua that has a large military student population, signals its willingness to be inclusive of all its students — including its most vulnerable who identify as LGBT.

A recent study on transgender youth released by the Hawaii Department of Health unearthed sobering statistics about the students in this community, including a higher prevalence of bullying, depression, dropping out of school and attempts at suicide than their peers overall.

The report lands two years after the state Department of Education adopted new guidelines around protections for transgender students — policies which transgender advocates say are robust but remain spottily applied.

“It was very impactful — we thought we won that day (in 2016 when the guidelines were adopted),” said Cathy Kapua, transgender service coordinator at Hawaii Health & Harm Reduction Center. “But there was little follow-up.”

Today, protections for transgender students in Hawaii’s public schools are uneven, according to advocates in this area, leaving it up to each school leader to set the tone.

“There’s a lot of things schools can do to make students more comfortable, but it’s totally principal-dependent,” said Renee Rumler, clinical director at The Lavender Center & Clinic, a nonprofit health care clinic in Honolulu that focuses on LGBT issues.

One of the main areas that still need attention, according to some advocates, is anti-bias training for staff that goes deeper than just a recitation of the DOE guidelines. This includes familiarity with what constitutes bullying and harassment against this community, best practices and guidance on how to handle student confidentiality concerns when they don’t have the support of their parents.

The Hawaii DOE’s Civil Rights Compliance Branch has held training sessions with administrators across the state that covers behaviors and outcomes transgender youth are most at risk for; what state and federal laws say; and requirements under Hawaii’s own guidelines, according to DOE spokeswoman Nanea Kalani. Training is also available to individual schools upon request, she said in an email.

“Schools can always call CRCB for guidance on specific situations or for additional training,” she added.

Hawaii has the highest rate of transgender prevalence in the United States, according to the Williams Institute, which focuses on sexual identity and gender identity issues at UCLA’s law school. A little more than 3 percent of public high school students — about 1,260 — identify as transgender, with Native Hawaiian, Filipino and Caucasian students each making up a quarter of the transgender student population here.

The Aloha State has taken considerable strides in giving attention to the issue of non-gender conformity, including with the 2016 DOE student guidelines. This past session, the Hawaii Legislature passed a state corollary to Title IX, the law banning discrimination on basis of sex, sexual orientation or gender identity in any educational program that receives federal funding.

Community leaders gather for a hearing to discuss proposed revisions to Chapter 19, the DOE’s student misconduct code that includes discipline for bullying and harassment.

Suevon Lee/Civil Beat

Some say underscoring Hawaii’s commitment to these protections is needed in light of proposed rollbacks considered by the Trump administration. Those include rescinding Obama-era guidance allowing transgender students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity; banning transgender youth from serving in the military; and, most recently, proposing to define gender as immutable and “fixed” at birth.

Hawaii is a leader when it comes to offering protections for LGBT people, which is why the proposals being floated at the federal level “sow confusion about which rules apply and where and whether or not trans and other gender and sexual minorities deserve protection at all,” said Dean Hamer, an independent filmmaker and LGBT advocate.

“This is why it’s imperative that the Hawaii guidelines be firmly articulated and implemented throughout the DOE system,” he added.

Use Of Restrooms A Common Problem

Goodwin, born and raised on Oahu to parents originally from New Zealand and Canada, is like any other teenager, with hopes, fears and dreams for the future. He also possesses an inordinate amount of self-awareness for his young age, perhaps owing to his deeply personal experience with self-identity growing up.

Four days a week after school, Goodwin travels via bus for an hour each way to work as a receptionist at The Lavender Center. He is also its “TransTeen Ambassador,” a role where he helps educate people of all career fields and backgrounds about the community by sharing his experience as a transgender teen to attorneys at Kapolei Judiciary Complex and active and former military personnel at Tripler Army Medical Center.

The 16-year-old was born as a female but identifies as male, and has been taking hormone replacement therapy for the past two years to advance the physical transition.

“My school has been absolutely wonderful in my transition. It’s been the most supportive school,” he said of Kalaheo High.

But based on his conversations with other transgender students around Hawaii, the same can’t be said of many other schools.

Farrington High School graduates wear different colors depending on gender. Transgender students can pick which color they choose to wear.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

A common problem is the issue of restrooms, he said. While the DOE’s 2016 guidelines explicitly permit a preferred use of restrooms by transgender teens, Goodwin has heard of transgender males and transgender females getting bullied or harassed when trying to use their preferred bathroom of choice.

“It’s pretty common for LGBT youth or especially for transgender youth to end up getting UTIs just from not being able to use the restroom at school,” he said. “It’s really common. It’s horribly common.”

Another issue is the practice by some school Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC programs, to impose “gendered uniforms” — that is different uniforms for boys and girls, with reprimands issued to students who don’t conform to the clothing which matches their birth gender.

The accommodation for students’ preferred names remains one of the most central concerns for transgender teens — and among the easiest for schools to address, he said.

“A common misconception is that schools will argue, ‘we can’t use a preferred name, we can’t put it on your ID card, because it’s not your legal name.’ Legally, schools can put your preferred name down as long as it stays within the school system and doesn’t leave,” he noted.

This could mean something as straightforward as assuring graduating seniors their preferred names will be read aloud when they “walk” across stage — without them having to undergo the anxiety of reminding administrators ahead of time.

“It’s such a milestone to go through graduation, but to go up and have your wrong name called out – it’s pretty devastating,” Goodwin said.

Currently, Hawaii’s public schools lack the ability to denote a student’s preferred name in the statewide record-keeping software program known as “Infinite Campus.” McKinley High Registrar and vice president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association Osa Tui raised the point at a recent Board of Education meeting. Board member Pat Bergin, a former DOE teacher and administrator, nodded and conceded the process of updating the system is “overwhelming.”

Board of Education Member Pat Bergin, a former DOE teacher, says the process for updating a transgender youth’s name in state school records can be “overwhelming.”

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Other schools like Farrington High — distinguished in the community for graduating Janet Mock, a well-known author, speaker and transgender advocate — have been ahead of the curve when it comes to acknowledging transgender youths.

The Kalihi high school has installed a unisex bathroom for at least the past five years, and despite the divided colors of graduation gowns for seniors (boys wear maroon and girls wear white), the school doesn’t raise a stink if a teen expresses a certain preference.

“If a transgender youth — from boy to girl — wants to use a white gown, we don’t make a big deal out of it,” said Farrington principal Al Carganilla.

Need For Greater Training

Rumler, the clinical director at The Lavender Center, recalls the approval of the 2016 DOE guidelines. It’s clear in her mind because the clinic was asked to provide training to central administrative staff in the Hawaii education department on LGBT issues.

Following the presentation, she expected there to be further engagement from the DOE.

“(After the presentation), they said ‘great, we’ll contact you with a follow up.’” Rumler paused. “Crickets. I never heard back from them.”

In the three years since the guidelines were handed down, the situation around LGBT bullying has remained at status quo, she said.

“I’m not sure if (a lack of adequate training) has made anything worse, but it has not made anything better,” she said. “Our hope (with such training) was that the subtle ways of bullying — the bullying outside the school — would then have an effective way to be addressed.”

She noted that the suicide attempt rate among transgender individuals alone warrants much more proactive measures: nationally, 1 in 2 transgender or gender non-conforming people will attempt suicide, compared with 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population, according to the Williams Institute.

The need for greater training was recently articulated in testimony to the BOE ahead of its Sept. 6 meeting by Robert Bidwell, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine physician in Hawaii.

During more than three decades of clinical practice in Hawaii, he wrote, he’s observed that kids facing gender identity and gender expression issues “are among the most likely to experience discrimination, bullying and harassment in our schools.”

Bidwell added that a statement from a 1992 report to the Legislature by the Hawaii Gay and Lesbian Teen Task Force indicating Hawaii’s schools are “dangerous places for youths” who are LGBT, with teachers ignoring the behavior or even participating in it, is “as true today as it was 26 years ago.”

As the state education department tackles bullying by focusing on revisions of student misconduct guidelines, advocates say more needs to be done on a statewide level.

“Any prevention you do has huge payoffs in reducing trauma, reducing negative impact on individual students,” Rumler said. “We know that education and awareness are part of that reducing of fear, that fear of ‘the other.'”

]]>For Four Generations, Teaching Has Been ‘The Family Business’https://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/for-four-generations-teaching-has-been-the-family-business/
Thu, 08 Nov 2018 10:01:42 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1307433was a move befitting an announcement in the local paper: Ethel Day, “one of Peoria’s brilliant young women,” would be leaving the small Illinois town that was home to teach math at a high school 4,500 miles and an ocean away — in Honolulu. The travel time alone was remarkable: the 12-day journey would begin […]

]]>It was a move befitting an announcement in the local paper: Ethel Day, “one of Peoria’s brilliant young women,” would be leaving the small Illinois town that was home to teach math at a high school 4,500 miles and an ocean away — in Honolulu.

The travel time alone was remarkable: the 12-day journey would begin with a six-day train ride from Illinois to San Francisco, followed by six days by boat to Hawaii via the S.S. Buckeye State.

“Miss Day expects to be in Honolulu several years,” the article stated. An accompanying portrait in the newspaper reflects the soft features of a newly minted college graduate barely 22 years of age, the woman’s gaze fixed straight into the lens as a small smile dances across her face.

Left: An article printed in the Peoria, Ill. newspaper on Aug. 14, 1921 details Ethel Day’s move to “teach in (the) islands.” Right, Day is shown with Hawaii locals in what’s believed to be somewhere on Oahu in the 1920s.

Little did Ethel Day know when she began her voyage from the mainland on Aug. 13, 1921 that she would spend the rest of her life in the islands as a public school teacher.

Now, nearly a century later, Day’s descendants still call Hawaii home — and they’ve followed in her footsteps. Her great-grandsons are both teachers at public schools in Hawaii, the fourth generation of Hawaii teachers in their family.

“The family story was that the Hawaii (Department of Education), much as they do now, was on the mainland recruiting teachers,” said Shane Albritton, a social studies teacher at public charter school The School For Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability, or SEEQS, of Day’s interest in Hawaii in the first place.

“Her classmate in college got all excited about the idea and convinced my great-grandma to do it,” he said. “And then at the last minute, her friend got cold feet and said ‘no, I can’t move that far away.’”

Census reports from 1930 and 1940 reveal where Ethel Day was living in Hawaii and later, her salary as principal of Honokaa School on Big Island. (click to expand).

So Day made the move on her own.

The first-year teacher taught math in Honolulu and met and married her first husband, a mainlander from Alabama, with whom she had a daughter. Day then moved to the Big Island, where she continued to teach, becoming principal of Honokaa School, which was started in 1889 to serve children of the Hamakua coast sugar cane communities and Parker Ranch cattle ranch workers.

A Legacy Made In The Classroom

Albritton, 37, whose mother’s mother’s mother is Day, was born on Oahu and raised on Maui. His path to becoming a public school teacher — his younger brother, Thomas, also teaches English at Prince David Kawananakoa Middle in Honolulu — follows a long line of family tradition, so much so he jokes it’s “the family business.”

His grandmother, Mary Helen King (Day’s only child with her first husband) was also a teacher, as was King’s husband, Garner Hall Ivey, a civil engineer turned executive at Alexander & Baldwin and the former wrestling coach at Maui’s Baldwin High.

So was Shane’s father, Terrence Albritton — a native Californian who once broke the world record in the shot put as a UH Manoa transfer student — and later served as a strength coach and physical education teacher at St. Anthony School of Maui.

Left: Mary Helen King, Shane’s maternal grandmother, with her sixth grade class at Kihei School on Maui. Right: Terry Albritton, top, was a physical education teacher at St. Anthony High School where son, Shane, second from left in first row, attended for grades 8 to 12.

Shane Albritton, who was schooled on Maui, eventually graduating from the same St. Anthony High School where his father taught, started his teaching career as a substitute at Baldwin High. The wrestling room there bears a plaque dedicated to Ivey, a beloved figure in the community, whose death in 2012 drew well over 500 people to the funeral.

The day Shane received his Baldwin High T-shirt as a substitute, he made a joke to the office staff about the pangs of betrayal he felt wearing a rival school’s shirt as a St. Anthony High graduate.

“Before that, I was another sub, coming in and out. After that, they felt more of a connection to me,” he said.

So devoted was his grandpa to Baldwin High, Albritton laughs, his house was painted in its school colors: maroon and baby blue.

“Teaching is the only job I’ve ever had that consistently cheers me up when I’m feeling down and leaves me happier at the end of the day than I was in the morning,” Shane Albritton, seen here in his SEEQS’ classroom, wrote on his 2018 Teacher of the Year application.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Mainland teacher recruits feed a big portion of the public school teacher pipeline in Hawaii. The Hawaii Department of Education has hired slightly more than 1,100 new teachers on average at the start of each new school year during the last five years, according to the most recent employment report.

Nearly one-fifth of all new teachers are not originally Hawaii residents, DOE figures show, and it sets up a kind of teacher churn the state is trying to curb by focusing on retention.

This chart shows average teacher pay in 1940 around the country (click to expand). Ethel Day’s annual salary of $2,400 as principal of a Big Island school was higher than what she would have been making as a teacher in her hometown of Peoria, Ill.

The top reason after retirement for leaving the profession is moving out of Hawaii, including 411 teachers alone at the end of the 2016-17 school year, according to DOE data.

It’s a reality that many young, first-time teachers come to Hawaii only to leave after a few years, due to the high cost of living or wanting to be physically closer to the communities in which they grew up. The DOE has tried to improve teacher retention by investing in long-term substitutes or education assistants with a more permanent attachment to the islands or seeking out retired military personnel to feed the teacher pipeline.

Connection To Place

Shane Albritton is ingrained in the local culture because his family dates back several generations here.

“Local haole,” he describes himself, while acknowledging: “It’s kind of an oxymoron when you put those two things together.”

Feeling a connection to place is important as a teacher, some might say. Albritton said his grandmother, Mary Helen King, didn’t have the easiest experience with her students — born in the islands, she attended Punahou as a boarding student and briefly taught public elementary on Maui after teaching at an American school in Guam.

Trisha Roy, a Maui native who teaches digital media at Baldwin High and who met Albritton when they were both teachers there, said she’s known plenty of mainland teachers who are able to strike a connection even if they’re not from here.

“When it comes to teaching, you just got to assimilate and try to understand the culture,” she said. “You just kind of have to be vulnerable in that sense.”

Recently honored as Charter School Teacher of the Year — which is based on the nomination of one’s principal and teacher colleagues — Shane Albritton graduated with a B.A. in English at Stony Brook University in New York and earned his post-baccalaureate certificate in secondary education at UH Manoa in 2016.

His teaching methodology at SEEQS — a public charter school serving grades 6 to 8 housed on the grounds of Kaimuki High School that emphasizes project-based learning — is rooted in the idea of students taking on roles as historical figures they’re learning about to feel more of a connection to the subject matter.

Students in Albritton’s social studies class pass around a “community ball” to comment during a class discussion.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

On a recent Thursday morning, inside a large tent that serves as a SEEQS classroom, Albritton led a discussion about Kamehameha I’s effort to conquer the islands in his class, “Playing A Role In Hawaii’s History.”

“How does history remember Kamehameha? Why do we remember him as Kamehameha the Great? What does the word legacy mean?” he asked, tossing a furry “community ball” to students, seated in circular fashion around the room, who raised their hand to respond.

Fanning himself with a small straw fan to keep cool in the early November heat, Albritton occasionally turned to a microphone from a portable karaoke machine to be heard over the noise of delivery trucks from a nearby back parking lot.

“A lot of (history learning) feels arbitrary and unnecessary. There’s no cultural buy-in, but if you are (assigned) that (historical person), you have a real vested interest,” Albritton said later of his class’ role-play structure. “It’s to cultivate cultural empathy.”

He eschews textbooks and assigns his students mainly primary sources to read.

Kids’ faces lit up when asked during a break what they thought about the class.

“You really need a lot of logic, so that helps,” said sixth-grader Kaya Kovach, age 10.

“It’s not a class where you just sit and put your head down,” said her classmate, Eleu Lukey, 12, also a sixth-grader.

Albritton, left, at a ceremony held at Washington Place earlier this month to honor 2019 Hawaii State Teacher of the Year nominees. Kealakehe Intermediate teacher Mathieu Williams, far right, was named Teacher of the Year.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

A ‘C’ Student Beginning

Albritton wasn’t a good student by his own admission. In secondary school, his report card would usually reflect all Cs, he said, often accompanied by such comments from teachers as “Shane is very intelligent but he doesn’t do his homework.”

After heading to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in New York after high school on a football scholarship, Albritton stayed for one year, returned to Hawaii, worked in hotel security and attended Maui Community College. There he encountered a political science instructor who he says was influential on his later career path.

He’s also worked as a tour guide on Maui and traveled all over, teaching English to adults abroad, including Spain, Brazil and Portugal, where he realized his love of teaching.

When Albritton first entered the Hawaii school system as a substitute, he was asked to teach classes outside his primary subject area, including special education psychology and Health Careers Pathways.

That experience provided a valuable window into effective classrooms: “If kids know you don’t know the topic, they’re not going to buy in as much,” he said. “A lot of teaching has to do with community building.”

After teaching at Baldwin High for three years, Albritton eventually moved to Oahu, and heard about SEEQS, a public charter school founded in 2013, while doing his case studies during his teacher training at UH.

Shane Albritton in his classroom teaching sixth to eighth graders in his class, “Playing a Role in Hawaii’s History.”

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

He said living in Hawaii on a teacher’s salary is challenging, noting that his share of rent is close to 50 percent of his monthly take home pay.

In Ethel Day’s era, teacher housing was provided on the Big Island. Her annual income of $2,400 was on the high range compared with other professionals, according to 1940 census data.

Albritton’s own unconventional path to teaching, continuing in the family tradition, has given him a broad perspective on what “success” means for his students.

“What I advocate for them is to really think about what makes them happy and what kind of a fulfilling life looks like, and to pursue that,” he said.

“What success looks like for me in the classroom is based much more on connections they can make and things they can learn and apply to their understanding of the world and real life, rather than doing something for a grade.”

]]>Hawaii Democrats Cheer New Balance of Power In Washingtonhttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/11/hawaii-democrats-cheer-new-balance-of-power-in-washington/
Wed, 07 Nov 2018 10:01:02 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1307887As his fellow Democrats across the nation reclaimed a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell stood on a stage with Hawaii’s newly re-elected Democratic Gov. David Ige and newly elected Lt. Gov. Josh Green and promised that taking back the U.S. House was just the first step. “We’re […]

]]>As his fellow Democrats across the nation reclaimed a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell stood on a stage with Hawaii’s newly re-elected Democratic Gov. David Ige and newly elected Lt. Gov. Josh Green and promised that taking back the U.S. House was just the first step.

“We’re building that foundation to make a difference,” Caldwell said, his voice and hand rising triumphantly before the packed ballroom at Honolulu’s Dole Cannery.

“We’re going to take the Senate back,” he said. “And we’re going to take the country back.”

Caldwell’s theme of taking back the country was a recurring motif among Hawaii Democrats on Tuesday. It wasn’t simply that the candidates from the nation’s bluest state had swept the statewide elections, as predicted. Equally energizing was the news that voters on the mainland had rebuked Republican President Donald Trump and won the House.

It was a celebration of one of the fundamental tenets of U.S. democracy, a three-branch government designed to provide checks and balances against one another.

“At least there is a check on our runaway president,” said U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, who handily beat Republican Ron Curtis to reclaim her seat.

Newly elected U.S. Rep. Ed Case echoed the idea, saying, “the first order is realistic checks and balances on the president.”

A giant television screen at the celebration for Hawaii Democrats on Tuesday night flashed the news that the party had taken control of the U.S. House.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

It was hardly a complete win for the Democrats. The GOP expanded its majority in the Senate, and in doing so assured the party can continue to initiate legislation and push through Trump’s judicial nominations.

But by taking the House, the Democrats are now positioned to block high-profile Republican initiatives, like President Donald Trump’s promise to overturn the Affordable Care Act and build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

House committees also will be able to conduct investigations, call for Trump’s tax returns and potentially even impeach Trump, although the Senate still would have the power to convict or acquit the president if the House did impeach him.

Case said the he hopes he and his fellow House freshmen will bring a new tone to governing, providing checks and balances but not simply obstructing for the sake of obstructing.

Ed Case, who won his race for Congress in a rout, told his fellow Democrats Tuesday that “the first order is realistic checks and balances on the president.”

Stewart Yerton/Civil Beat

“Let’s find a better way forward,” Case said. “We have an opportunity to take some baby steps that will get us back to the habit of leading. And I hope we don’t waste that opportunity.”

Even with a Republican majority in the Senate, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, another Tuesday winner, said there’s a chance to push through legislation. She pointed to criminal justice reform as a case in point.

“On some issues there are opportunities,” she said. “On others it will be more challenging.”

Good News For The GOP, Too

Republicans, meanwhile, applauded their continued control of the Senate.

“We never believed wholly in the ‘blue wave,’ because the Republican National Committee had an intense ground game for this election,” said Miriam Hellreich, the national committeewoman for the Republican Party of Hawaii, speaking at her party’s headquarters at 725 Kapiolani Blvd on Tuesday evening.

“I would have been surprised if the tsunami happened that the Democrats predicted.”

About 50 Republican Party supporters gathered inside the room, noshing on potluck food and watching a mounted television screen for election results as a life-size cutout of President Trump stood to the side.

Republicans gathered at an election party at GOP headquarters weren’t too alarmed about Democrats gaining control of the House, with one calling it just a “blue splash.”

Ronen Zilberman/Civil Beat

The mood was convivial but not too rowdy as Republican party members — mostly skewing on the middle-aged to older side, with several donning red “Make America Great Again” baseball caps — discussed their continued support for Trump’s policies, including tax cuts, a tougher immigration stance and directions on national security.

They spoke with enthusiasm about the state of the country over the last two years, and didn’t seem perturbed by the Democrats capturing the House majority on the national front.

“We were promised a blue wave, and I think it’s a blue splash, so we’re feeling good,” said Nick Ochs, 32, director of the Young Republicans of Hawaii.

“I don’t think (either party) is incredibly stunned tonight,” he added. “This is more or less what conventional wisdom said would happen.”

Beverly C. Sutton Toomey, left, reacts to the news of the Republicans keeping their hold on the U.S. Senate.

Ronen Zilberman/Civil Beat

A handful of Republican candidates mingled in the crowd, including Cam Cavasso, who lost the U.S. House 1st Congressional District race to Ed Case; Marissa Kerns, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor; and Diamond Garcia, who at age 21, tried to defeat Maile Shimabukuro for state Senate District 21.

Shirlene Ostrov, Hawaii Republican Party chairwoman, said she was encouraged by the turnout at the watch party, adding that her goal is to continue to unify the Republican Party in Hawaii — the country’s bluest state – something that is “not going to happen overnight,” she said.

“What I’m excited about is this excitement,” she said, gesturing at those in the room. “People I’ve never seen before are volunteering.”

After his stirring speech to the Democrats, Caldwell came down from the stage to pose for pictures with supporters and talk to the media.

The mayor echoed Case and others about the new balance of power. Caldwell said the House was unlikely to impeach Trump, even if the move proved warranted, simply because the Republican Senate would likely acquit him.

But back at the Democratic gathering, Caldwell said the very presence of a Democratic-controlled House changes things.

“I do think the president does have to have one eye on the House,” he said. “That’s a moderating influence.”

]]>Why The Effort To Curb School Bullying In Hawaii Isn’t Workinghttps://www.civilbeat.org/2018/10/why-the-effort-to-curb-school-bullying-in-hawaii-isnt-working/
Mon, 29 Oct 2018 10:03:19 +0000https://www.civilbeat.org/?p=1306252Editor’s Note: This is the first in an occasional series of stories examining school bullying in Hawaii, including the extent of the problem, what’s being done about it and solutions that other jurisdictions have found effective. Read about one Maui family’s experience here. If you have your own experience to share, email Suevon Lee at […]

]]>Editor’s Note:This is the first in an occasional series of stories examining school bullying in Hawaii, including the extent of the problem, what’s being done about it and solutions that other jurisdictions have found effective. Read about one Maui family’s experience here. If you have your own experience to share, email Suevon Lee at slee@civilbeat.org.

Before the Hawaii Legislature passed an anti-bullying statute in 2011, the state was one of only five in the country without such a law on the books.

It was an argument in favor of passage, largely to counteract the opposition that rose up from the state’s Department of Education, whose leadership at the time argued its bullying policies were sufficient.

The DOE needn’t have lost too much sleep: The Safe Schools Act, when it was signed by then-Gov. Neil Abercrombie in July 2011, was a fragment of its original version. It simply required the state Board of Education to monitor the DOE “for compliance” with the department’s own policies on bullying, cyberbullying and harassment.

But the DOE policies — despite recent momentum to beef them up following a federal review that found the agency wasn’t complying with civil rights protections — are still lackluster, some lawmakers say.

Rep. John Mizuno, co-chair of the Keiki Caucus, said the DOE’s anti-bullying policies are insufficient.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“If the DOE policies were enough,” said Rep. John Mizuno, a co-chair of the Keiki Caucus, “we wouldn’t have all these lawsuits hanging over the DOE.”

Policymakers continue to call for anti-bullying legislation seven years after the Safe Schools Act was enacted. It speaks to the DOE’s lack of a comprehensive plan to address bullying or take a closer look at its root causes, according to advocates for reform.

The most wide-reaching lawsuit is a proposed class action case brought two months ago by several parents from various schools. They allege school officials didn’t take sufficient measures to respond to or protect their children when alerted to alleged misbehavior from other kids, including racial slurs, sexual harassment and physical violence on the school bus.

Related

That lawsuit charges a “systemic failure” on the part of the DOE to properly address bullying or harassment in its schools, including incidents targeting kids based on their race, gender, national origin and sexual orientation.

Eric Seitz, the Honolulu attorney handling the case, said prior to filing suit in federal court he urged state education officials to examine the underlying reasons for the alleged behavior or create statewide anti-bullying procedures to avoid the need for legal action.

“We kept asking them, why don’t you look into the reasons for this? Is it acceptable at your schools to call people by these kinds of names?” he said. “They said, we’re not going to do anything, we’re just going to discipline the student.”

The lawsuit, he said, “was the only way to get their attention.”

Advocates Dissatisfied

The Safe Schools Act as initially drafted directed the DOE to, among other things, conduct annual training at schools on how to “promote peace and respect”; require complex areas to create a mechanism for reporting bullying and harassment and allow parents to file complaints against a complex area if it didn’t abide by that policy; make available to the public statewide statistics on bullying or cyberbullying; and designate one DOE official as a primary contact for anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies.

Those provisions never made it into the final version of the statute.

Some Board of Education members at the time opposed the law as originally written, arguing that educational policy should not be enforced through state statutes, that the bill was too “prescriptive” and that it opened up the department to liability, according to minutes from a March 3, 2011, meeting.

But the opponents were outnumbered, and the board voted to support the bill.

A federal compliance review of bullying in Hawaii’s schools took place during the administration of former schools Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

DOE leadership was fixed in opposition. In legislative testimony, then-Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi said House Bill 688 was not necessary, pointing out the existence of administrative rules like Chapter 19, the student discipline code; “schoolwide positive behavioral interventions and supports”; and the Comprehensive Student Support System network guiding all schools.

“Forcing schools to do more monitoring and training would be counter to Matayoshi’s promise to principals — that she would ‘take things off their plate’, not add to it,” recalled Kim Coco Iwamoto, who sat on the school board at the time and supported the version of the Safe Schools Act as originally drafted.

When the stripped down bill eventually passed, “advocates were dissatisfied,” Iwamoto said.

“The legislators went through the motions, patted themselves on the back, but basically (the law) was very hollow.”

In the years since passage of the bill, other anti-bullying measures were introduced, but lacked “the zest” of earlier efforts, Mizuno said, adding “2019 must be the year that we pass something, because an administrative rule is not strong enough.”

Rep. Ryan Yamane introduced an anti-bullying bill in 2015 that would have established a process to empower families.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

In 2015, after hearing from parents across the state that schools weren’t responsive to their concerns, Rep. Ryan Yamane introduced an anti-bullying bill that would have established a clear process for aggrieved parents to challenge a program’s proposed solution to a bullying incident if they felt the response wasn’t adequate.

“I wanted that specifically written in statute to protect victims and give the family and the victims a sense of control again,” Yamane said. “That’s what they lose when they’re bullied.”

But the bill was deferred after being heard in the House Education Committee. Another bill that same year — which got further, but died in conference — proposed creating a bullying prevention task force within the DOE. In her testimony, Matayoshi wrote she had “substantive concerns” with the proposal, as the DOE didn’t have the budget to implement the policies, procedures and training that would have been needed.

After the 2011 bill was watered down, the U.S Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights started focusing on bullying in Hawaii schools. It’s not clear whether the unspooling of the bill triggered the federal compliance review.

A Sept. 15, 2011, Office for Civil Rights letter addressed to Matayoshi obtained by Civil Beat through a Freedom of Information Act request noted that compliance reviews are “designed to address systemic issues and ensure that violations are readily identified and properly identified.”

Sites are selected “based on various sources of information, including statistical data and information from parents, advocacy groups, the media, and community organizations,” it said.

During the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years, the OCR surveyed students and staff in 29 schools and conducted 200 interviews with administrative staff, eventually concluding DOE was not in compliance with civil rights laws designed to protect students based on race, gender, national origin and sexual orientation.

Superintendent Christina Kishimoto, left, and Board of Education Chairwoman Catherine Payne say they are committed to ensuring schools are safe for all students. But critics say the DOE’s anti-bullying policies are inadequate.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

In a December 2017 resolution agreement with the federal government closing the review, the Hawaii DOE was required to hire “equity specialists” for its 15 complex areas, post anti-discrimination notices on school websites and revise Chapter 19, its student misconduct code. It recently recommended making bullying a more serious “Class A” offense.

But advocates say a more robust effort is needed at a district-wide level, including better training and more preventive measures, since student discipline doesn’t address the root cause of bullying. Hawaii is the only state that has a single school district, encompassing 256 public schools and 36 public charter schools that serve 179,000 students.

“For a comprehensive anti-bullying initiative to be truly effective, it takes a lot of resources,” said Judith Clark, executive director of Hawaii Youth Services Network, a coalition of organizations. “You cannot train school staff in how to intervene effectively by developing a PowerPoint and showing it at the school once a year.”

Bullying and harassment appear to be particularly stubborn problems for Hawaii schools: In 2017, the islands had more middle-schoolers who thought about suicide compared with the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And a higher number of high-schoolers than the national average said they skipped classes because they felt unsafe at school, according to CDC.

In an op-ed that appeared in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser last month, schools Superintendent Christina Kishimoto, who assumed the position in August 2017, said that the DOE plans to “proactively educate” students and staff on “effective behavior interventions and peer-to-peer supports” to promote safe learning environments.

Kishimoto was not available for comment when asked for specifics on those plans.

Will New DOE Policies Go Far Enough?

One strategy the DOE will try out is an anti-bullying smartphone app that will enable confidential reporting of incidents, Kishimoto said recently. The program will be piloted at middle schools in January and high schools starting next fall, following staff training.

As outlined on its website, the DOE encourages schools to develop their own anti-bullying policies. But some advocates say that doesn’t hold all schools accountable.

“There’s this whole idea that every school should set their own curriculum and while I can see how that’s efficacious, it means schools that don’t want to address an issue, won’t,” said Dean Hamer, an independent filmmaker who’s pushed for more proactive anti-bullying action by the DOE.

Danny Afualo, parent of Kahuku High and Intermediate students, served as emcee for the school’s Unity Day event Wednesday evening, which was part of a national bullying prevention initiative.

Suevon Lee/Civil Beat

Some schools, like Kahuku High and Intermediate, have taken the initiative to come up with their own student safety policies. The North Shore school uses a philosophy called “Power of Intention,” or “poi,” as a framework.

For instance, the school asks students to identify and designate an adult staffer who they feel comfortable confiding in if they feel threatened by another student, and also follows up with each student who has reported an incident until they graduate.

In honor of a nationwide bullying prevention initiative called “Unity Day,” the school Wednesday evening held an event for families to learn about what it’s doing to foster an anti-bullying culture and to also remind them of their role in promoting positive behaviors at home.

The event featured a rundown of popular social networking sites students use and encouraged parents to be aware of their kids’ presence on social media. If parents notice anything resembling cyberbullying, administrators encouraged them to come forward with that information.

“Self-reporting is the best form of self-defense,” Principal Donna Lindsey told the handful of families who attended. “If you let us know, it gives us the opportunity to keep kids safe.”

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